Downtown Kelowna streets are growing quieter as businesses face a surge in crime that owners say is driving customers away and putting staff at risk.
Diners, shoe stores, book shops and even chocolate makers are just some of the downtown businesses that have been affected by crime and disorder, as people are becoming “more and more brazen,” according to one area representative.
Todd Daniels, owner of Gallery Streetwear on Bernard Avenue, had his storefront broken into Jan. 2, and some of his merchandise was looted as the alleged robber rushed out of the store.
He said the night of the call, police persistently attempted to get hold of him while he was sleeping.
“I knew immediately that we had been broken into,” Daniels said, describing his thoughts as he picked up his phone.
Gallery Streetwear and its staff were subject to multiple dangerous events throughout December. Aside from the break-in, one of his staff members was bear-sprayed outside the storefront and in another instance, an employee was chased through three blocks of downtown by someone wielding a knife.
“Somebody’s going to be hurt,” Daniels said, noting crime and behaviour downtown has become more dangerous in the 14 months they have been open.
Gallery Streetwear is not the only business to be impacted by the crime wave, with Daniels saying he’s part of an active group chat with many other employers who are experiencing crime and vandalism.
Accent Chocolate was broken into on Nov. 15, 2025, with the incident being discovered by recently hired employee Dolli Manweiler.
“It happened Saturday morning at 8:20 a.m.,” Manweiler recalled. “When people are already up and walking around, a criminal just broke in because they know that there is no punishment.”
Manweiler, who often works alone in the downtown location, now fears for her safety when coming to work and always feels the need to be ready in case something happens to her.
“Unfortunately, every day something happens. Sometimes when I come to work before the business opens, I need to clean everything outside because, of course, the homeless people spend the night,” she said, adding that she sees people using drugs outside the storefront as well as coming in and asking for free chocolate or to use the washroom, and sometimes being met with anger when she refuses.
The shop employee likened the crime in downtown Kelowna to that of the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, which has a complex set of social issues, including disproportionately high levels of drug use, homelessness, poverty, crime, mental illness and sex work.
“This kind of crime and what we experience on day-by-day, a lot of shoplifting, has completely destroyed all business,” she said.
Michael Neill, owner of Mosaic Books, has operated the store at the Bernard Avenue location since 1999. While the bookstore has experienced a lot of crime since 2017, Neill said it was only two or three years ago that the problem seemed to increase.
“We’ve never experienced this much vandalism and problems,” said Neill.
“Certainly some of the customers don’t feel comfortable, and most importantly, our staff don’t feel comfortable when somebody comes in and is terribly high and just falls over in the kids’ section with their bum hanging out,” he said, referencing an issue that has happened several times.
All three businesses noted slow response times by the RCMP in the cases of break-ins. Manweiler said RCMP didn’t arrive on scene to deal with her findings until six or seven hours after she reported it. Daniels said nobody was even aware his shop was broken into until two hours after it happened. While Neill said there were times when his store called RCMP because of a person causing a disturbance in the store, and no one showed up.
During the Jan. 13 press conference, the City’s Community Safety Director Darren Caul said that despite additional investments over the past few years into public safety resources like RCMP, bylaw and the fire department, they “may have not yet fully translated into the level of safety or response times that businesses need.”
With an increasing number of businesses begining to be vocal about their troubles, many are now looking at where a solution can be found.
George Greenwood is the CEO of the Kelowna Chamber of Commerce, which acts as an advocacy voice for local businesses.
“[What businesses are saying], it’s the same message that I’ve been hearing for a year or more, it’s frustration,” he said.
Greenwood believes the issue increased as the city made changes to the city’s outdoor sheltering site , placing more rules when staying in the encampment. As a result, only a fraction of the population still stay there while many others, Greenwood believes, dispered across the city.
He added that staff of the Chamber feel unsafe, with there even being bullet holes in the property’s window and the organization having to hire security for the foreseeable future.
Greenwood said the Chamber’s role is voice business concerns to higher levels of government that the organization has an easier time reaching than lone businesses. He said that so far, businesses have been concerned with how the crime problem is being treated.
“They’re angry, they want to get something done. They’ve had enough lip service, and it seems like people are always passing the buck, ‘well, it’s not our level of government’.”
Something has to change
Manweilder felt that city officals have let businesses down by not caring about the continuous crime problems. She wants the city to make more efforts that will “clean” downtown and maybe play a part in building a shelter to keep those experiencing homelessness off the streets.
While not wanting to speculate on what is needed, Daniels said he has noticed there is a lack of patrols late in the night from bylaw or RCMP officers.
On the other hand, Greenwood said that businesses calling for more enforcement does not mean a lack of compassion for the unhoused. In fact, he said that proper treatment for people dealing with mental health or housing challenges relies on businesses to stay thriving, as tax dollars generated will go towards better social services.
“Everybody cares. But people’s livelihoods are at risk, the money they’re investing is at risk, they’re employees don’t feel safe. So there needs to be some balance in protecting the most vulnerable people on the street and also protecting business owners who are paying taxes and those taxes are going to help pay services that are going to help these people on the street.”
An empty toolbag
Kelowna Mayor Tom Dyas said there are some solutions the city can take or has taken at a municipal level to make the city safer.
In regard to the immediate future, Dyas has said there will be more boots-on-the-ground in the form of “enhanced” patrols between bylaw officers and RCMP. These patrols will specifically target areas identified to be at risk.
He also mentioned – a fact which was also echoed in a Jan. 13 RCMP press conference – that the city will also be going door-to-door to different businesses to gather more information on how owners would like to see the city become safer.
The city has an upcoming forum on Jan. 27 for business owners, RCMP, and the province, so all parties can hear from each other.
Dyas spoke of the city’s efforts to help the unhoused population. He said the new rules implemented last year at ‘Tent City’ or the rail trail have allowed for both city staff who serviced the people in the encampment to feel safer as well as residents of the encampment to feel more safe.
He also pointed to another city initiative, the tiny homes housing project, which he said a number of people who had been living at the rail trail relocated to.
For people following the rules at the rail trail – and on the streets – or for people looking to better themselves in through transitional housing programs like the tiny homes program, Dyas said those are the people the city wants to allocate resources towards.
“It’s individuals who are looking at not doing that and creating havoc or crime or different types of scenarios within our downtown core that we cannot continue to provide services to in whatever way, shape, or form that is, unless there is greater compliance with regards to what we need to see as a city,” he said.
Paula Quinn, the executive director for the Downtown Kelowna Association (DKA), explains that it has its own patrol service known as the ‘red shirts.’
These red shirts operate from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., responding to call-outs from businesses for help, as well as creating relationships with the unhoused population in the area.
Quinn said the red shirts have a good relationship with 90 per cent of the unhoused population, which allows them to keep situations calm and, when needed, ask them to clear out of an area.
However, Quinn said she feels people don’t always understand what the red shirts are and aren’t capable of doing.
“We’re not enforcers,” she said, adding that the red shirts don’t operate at night because of this fact. “We’re not able to be enforcers, and normally something happening at that time of the morning usually involves the need for bylaw or police.”
Regarding enforcement, Dyas said increasing the number of RCMP and bylaw officers is one tool in a municipality’s toolbox that the city has used, but the burden of that falls on the taxpayers.
“One of the major tools that we have is to try and bring up an additional type of enforcement,” he said.
In the 2026 budget, the City of Kelowna has marked room for four new RCMP officers and two bylaw enforcement officers in Rutland.
Yet, during the Jan. 13 RCMP press conference, Supt. Chris Goebel addressed the concern for more enforcement in the downtown, stating that the issue still goes beyond the scope of what the RCMP can treat.
“It is tied to complex and intersecting factors such as untreated mental health challenges, addiction, homelessness and repeat offending (…) enforcement alone cannot address the root cause of what we are seeing.”
Advocating to higher levels of government
Dyas and Goebel both addressed the issue that policy changes from higher levels of government are also needed to combat the issue of increased social disorder.
Both spoke about the need for more treatment options for both voluntary and non-voluntary mental health patients.
Specific with his request, Dyas said he’s advocating for more compassionate mandatory care facilities to provide long-term care for people with mental health and addiction challenges, which B.C. Premier David Eby campaigned on in 2024.
In June 2025, the province did open an involuntary care centre in Maple Ridge that will treat patients for an “indeterminate” amonut of time, as well as a few spots in the Surrey Pretrial Services Centre.
Dyas wants to see another facility opened, which he feels will help deal with the property damage and disturbances in the downtown core.
“One thing that I think would be extremely helpful is for the province and Interior Health to accept that there is a site available right now down in Oliver with regards to that correction centre and there is an opportunity to develop compassionate mandatory care within that site,” he said, referring to the Okanagan Correctional Centre.
Businesses and the city have also said they believe the issue of chronic property crime offenders is also a factor in the issues downtown.
Neill, who has a ‘book of shame’ in his store for repeated trouble makers said he was shocked when he caught a person lighting a fire outside his establishment and they told him, “call the police, I’ll be out tomorrow.”
“That was a telling statement,” Neill said. “Really? There’s no consequence?”
Daniels added that the justice system could be more harsh on repeat offenders.
Even as police attempt to crack down on repeat offenders through programs like Chronic Property Crime and Public Disorder Intervention Initiative, advocates like Quinn and Greenwood both stated that the problem needs to shifted from a few individuals to a broader scope.
“We’ve got to look at it as a collective, because this is a bigger issue than just five or 10 people. There is more happening, there is more individuals out there and they are becoming more brazen,” Quinn said.
Greenwood shared that he doesn’t think things will change by taking a few offenders off the street at one time, and that investment change to heathcare, housing and law enforcement is needed.
“Bail reform is a good first step. But again, If we get those five people off the street for a prolonged period of time, somebody else will just fill in that gap and there’s a new five people that step up. So we need resources, housing, there needs to be mental health facilities and addiction recovery services, more investment in that, but also more investment in policing. Until that happens I don’t think you’re going to see a reduction in the instances of vandalism and theft in the downtown area.”
During the Jan. 13 press conference, Caul said that many of the city’s partners are indicating that there are many “new individuals” in Kelowna, many coming from the Prairies.
While many point to the fact that these changes from the federal government are needed, Dyas said some responsibility has to fall on the provincial government as well to add more crown prosectuors so, “we’re not dealing with that revolving door which we’re experiencing right now,” adding that he will continue to advocate to higher levels of government for these changes.
“Regrettably, just within my powers, it doesn’t allow me to uneratterally change federal law or to have a health grant compassionate mandatory sort of care,” Dyas said. “What we can do and what we’re able to do in the community, one of the first things is to listen to the concerns that people have and to obtain ideas and to be able to address the items that we can address. We will continue to do that and at the same time advocate for some of the changes that we feel will make a big difference.”
What’s next
Quinn, Greenwood, and Goebel said businesses have to keep reporting criminal incidents to the RCMP, which Goebel and Caul encourage everyone to do when seeing a crime, whether it’s in progress or the aftermath.
They believe that crime statistics may not be too close to the reality of the situation because business owners are giving up. Neill confirmed this, saying he spoke with another business owner who didn’t report a large fire that was started in the back of their property because it seemed “futile.”
Quinn said this is not the way things will change.
She noted that the red shirts only received 497 calls over the holidays, a decrease from previous years, which she believes stems from underreporting.
“Data is king; it tells people what is actually happening. So in full solution, these numbers are incorrect,” she said. “Keep reporting, know that you are seen.”
Daniels feels that change is on the horizon and that people – and the city – are now listening and collaborating with each other.
“Something is happening here,” he said hopefully.
Business owners such as Neill called on Kelowna residents to continue shopping downtown during this time to support them.
“We don’t want to scare away people from coming downtown, because by and large it is safe,” Neill said.
Daniels, who was born and raised in Kelowna, sent the same message.
“Please come on down and hang out. We need you more than ever. We don’t want our community to go away,” he said, wanting Gallery Streetwear to continue thriving.
My whole life’s work is this for me, this is it for me, and it’s very important to me.”